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UPDATE: Vacula has resigned.
As most of you are no doubt aware, the atheist and skeptic movements have had just a teensy bit of a problem with misogyny in their ranks. You may recall the unholy shitstorm that erupted last year when Rebecca Watson of Skepchick casually mentioned in a YouTube video that it might not be such a good idea for dudes to try to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. The assholes of the internet still haven’t forgiven Watson for her assault on the sacred right of creepy dudes to creep women out 24 hours a day, every day.
Watson is hardly the only skeptic to face vicious misogynist harassment for the crime of blogging while feminist. Last month, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag announced that near constant harassment from online bullies was wearing her down to such a degree that she felt it necessary to shut down her blog – hopefully only temporarily.
I can no longer write anything without my words getting twisted, misrepresented, and quotemined. I wake up every morning to abusive comments, tweets, and emails about how I’m a slut, prude, ugly, fat, feminazi, retard, bitch, and cunt (just to name a few). If I block people who are twisting my words or sending verbal abuse, I receive an even larger wave of nonsensical hate about how I’m a slut, prude, feminazi, retard, bitch, cunt who hates freedom of speech (because the Constitution forces me to listen to people on Twitter). This morning I had to delete dozens of comments of people imitating my identity making graphic, lewd, degrading sexual comments about my personal life. In the past, multiple people have threatened to contact my employer with “evidence” that I’m a bad scientist (because I’m a feminist) to try to destroy my job. I’m constantly worried that the abuse will soon spread to my loved ones.
I just can’t take it anymore.
McCreight’s harassers and their enablers were delighted in this “victory,” taking to Twitter to give McCreight some final kicks on the way out the door. “Good riddance, #jennifurret , you simple minded dolt,” wrote @skepticaljoe. “I couldn’t be happier,” added @SUICIDEBOMBS. “Eat shit you rape-faking scum.”
One of the celebrators that day was an atheist activist named Justin Vacula, who joked that “Jen’s allegedly finished blogging…and this time it’s not her boyfriend who kicked her off the internet.”
So here’s the latest twist:
Justin Vacula has just been given a leadership position in the Pennsylvania chapter of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for secular Americans whose advisory board includes such big names as Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Susan Jacoby, Wendy Kaminer, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie and Julia Sweeney.
It’s an astonishing choice. In addition to gloating that bullies had led McCreight to shut down her blog, Vacula has harassed atheist blogger and activist Surly Amy, including writing a post on A Voice for Men (yes, that A Voice for Men) cataloging all the sordid details of his supposed case against her. At one point he even posted her address, and a photo of her apartment building, on a site devoted to hating on feminist atheist bloggers.
Blogger Stephanie Zvan has set up a petition on Change.org urging the Secular Coalition of America to reconsider its choice. You can find further examples of Vacula’s questionable behavior there.
As Watson notes in a post on Skepchick, Vacula’s position with the SCA is likely to “drive progressive women away from the secular cause.” She adds,
I will never, ever get involved with SCA so long as someone like him holds a position of power anywhere, let alone in a state I live in. So Vacula is actively driving people away from SCA. …
It’s all a real shame, because SCA fills an important role in our movement and I’d like to give them my support. … I don’t believe secular organizations should reward bullies and bigots with high-level positions, even if those positions are volunteer-only.
I recommend that everyone here take a look at the petition.
@Thomas
I’ll just leave this here since you appear to have missed it while having your little ragewank:
Adding things to your position is not back-pedalling, Captain Logic.
@CassandraSays
I don’t think you know anything about my position. Usually I don’t even enjoy talking down to people. But I make an exception for your. See how special you are.
It is also telling that Vacula’s post is tagged “FEMINIST LIES”… Whereas if you read it carefully, unfortunately this is needed as it is buried in there, he is *assuming* Surly Amy filed the DMCA. There is no evidence she actually did it… Could easily have been an over zealous fan. Or if you were a slimepit-paranoid-conspiracy theory type he did it to himself!!!
Did Thomas just try to neg CassandraSays? We can all see through that, dude. Book in question came out, like, what , 12 years ago?
Oh, I think you’ve made yourself perfectly clear. If you didn’t intend to then that’s a shame.
@ Cassandra- I think you’re attributing a sense of social responsibility to a group that just wants to be mean to people with a different view of the world than them. The off time they might actually make a decent point about problems with organized religion is just a nice opportunity to use the moral high ground as a rhetorical device. Throw them in a group of people with a relatively similar agreement on what constitutes a good argument, however, and they start to lose a grip on their false sense of intellectual superiority. That’s probably explains the venom they have for those women they obsessively deride and consciously endanger- they left their comfort-zone of nastiness and started arguing on topics that weren’t quite so easily to refute. The only thing these dudes have going for them is feeling smart, and these women made them look stupid. So they hate them.
Dear all the angry little dudebro internet atheist trolls who have posted here,
The fact that you’re just so gosh-darn committed to defending spaces/people that exist purely to denigrate, harass and intimidate others by doing things like (but not limited to)
kind of proves our point.
Most people would condemn that kind of behaviour and understand why it wasn’t such a welcoming environment, but because you are so convinced that you are totally LOGICAL ‘N’ RATIONAL and therefore right about everything, you instead start twisting and turning to ‘prove’ that the victims either ‘deserved it’ or ‘it wasn’t that bad’, then act like you’re some kind of social justice warrior for defending people’s ‘rights’ to be abusive doucheholes on the internet – to the point where when someone says that they don’t like abusive doucheholes, you cast them as some kind of oppressor of FREEDOM.
This is why people don’t like you and don’t want to be in your gang.
Sincerely,
Nat Fantastic xoxo
Also, can I make a general request here? Apparently the online atheist community has decided to spend most of their time squabbling with each other (and in some cases crossing the line from squabbling into harassment, like Vacula did). If that’s how people want to spend their time then that’s fine, but do they really have to carry their inter-blog squabbles over into every single other vaguely related online space? This isn’t the first time someone has shown up here with a grudge against, say, Pharyngula and a quite unwarranted belief that we’re going to care about what X said to Y in the comments of Zs blog. It’s getting tedious.
@timetravellingfool
I used to comment here long before you even knew the site existed. Trying to engage in good faith is pointless. So I spare my time and energy.
I got modded because I quoted the language that anti-feminist atheists used… achem. So I’m going to try again:
Dear all the angry little dudebro internet atheist trolls who have posted here,
The fact that you’re just so gosh-darn committed to defending spaces/people that exist purely to denigrate, harass and intimidate others by doing things like (but not limited to)
kind of proves our point.
Most people would condemn that kind of behaviour and understand why it wasn’t such a welcoming environment, but because you are so convinced that you are totally LOGICAL ‘N’ RATIONAL and therefore right about everything, you instead start twisting and turning to ‘prove’ that the victims either ‘deserved it’ or ‘it wasn’t that bad’, then act like you’re some kind of social justice warrior for defending people’s ‘rights’ to be abusive doucheholes on the internet – to the point where when someone says that they don’t like abusive doucheholes, you cast them as some kind of oppressor of FREEDOM.
This is why people don’t like you and don’t want to be in your gang.
Sincerely,
Nat Fantastic xoxo
@ lowquacks- Haha, but you totally own it, quacks! Different league.
@CassandraSays
Let’s just be grateful it’s not tumblr.
Protip – if you’re aiming for snarky and condescending it helps if you avoid writing things like “I make an exception for your”. “Your” what?
@ Thomas- Yes, dear, your inability to engage in a discussion like a reasonable adult is all the fault of the Manboobzers. And probably the theists. And most likely women. We forced your hand, you had to be a snide brat- there was no other way.
@CassandraSays
This is you’re comeback? Mea culpa. I made a typo.
Yeah, I’m picking up what you’re throwing down here, Cassandra. New chew toys are fun, but these dudes could be wrong forever without even a niggling of self-awareness or shame. However, I dunno that allowing them one thread to be kicked around in is going to really derail what goes on here as a whole. If they want to get their asses whooped, what’s the harm?
And another one.
I would of course love to engage you on a serious level, but your decision to post comments with no actual content had led to a situation where there’s not much to do but snark. It’s not that anyone here wants to just mock you, you understand – you’ve forced us to be like this.
@ timetravellingfool
Oh, I don’t think David needs to ban them or anything, my point was more that their repeated attempts to drag other people into their petty little personal conflicts is irritating, and very bad netiquette.
Are irritating, rather. Maybe we should ban Thomas, since his shitty grammar seems to be infectious.
@CassandraSays
And another one.
Just testing if your paying attention.
So Thomas, your sole argument has now boiled down to a desperate need to be shitty and annoying to women on the internet?
I am SHOCKED. /sarcasm
Wait a minute… unjustified feelings of persecution, obsession with CassandraSays….
What’s your morning height Thomas?
Anyone else think this comedian really isn’t that hot?
@thenatfantastic |
So Thomas, your sole argument has now boiled down to a desperate need to be shitty and annoying to women on the internet?
I’m shitty to idiots on the internet. I’m a feminist, I don’t discriminate.
What’s your morning height Thomas?
182 cm.
Urgh, I was wondering how long it would take before someone came in with the “ATHEISTS SUPERIOR, THEISTS INFERIOR” bullshit. That was another thing that kept me from ever getting involved with skeptics. I seriously saw someone crowing about how atheists having the highest IQs was a documented fact and therefore anyone who believed in a deity was an idiot